Louisville's Monarch High expanding Arabic program

About 20 students enrolled in the school's inaugural class this year

Monarch High School's introductory Arabic class has garnered enough interest that the school plans to expand, adding more levels.

Redouan Bouchta, who also teaches Spanish at Monarch High, is teaching the Arabic classes. Bouchta, who previously taught Arabic and French in Morocco, proposed Arabic because so many students were interested. About 20 students enrolled in the school's inaugural Arabic class this year.

"It's a great class," he said. "They're all here because they want to learn a new language. I love to talk to them in Arabic and teach them about the culture. They can write. They can read. It's unbelievable how much they learn."

The school board recently approved adding Arabic 2 and 3 at Monarch. The Arabic classes are among the 14 new classes approved next school year in the Boulder Valley School District. Other new classes include middle school Java programming, middle school robotics, yoga, pre-advanced placement Latin and basic welding.

Boulder Valley is one of the few districts in the state that requires that students take a world language to graduate. The requirement in Boulder Valley is a year of world language, level 2 or higher. At Monarch, officials said, many students have met their requirement by the end of their sophomore year and are looking to try a second world language.

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Monarch is one of a small number of high schools in Colorado to offer the language, adding it to the American Sign Language, French, German and Spanish classes in the school's world languages department. Several Boulder Valley high schools offer less common language classes. Boulder High, for example, offers Japanese. Fairview High and Peak to Peak Charter School offer Mandarin.

At Monarch, the students in Arabic recently worked on translating sentences, writing the date and asking each other questions in Arabic. They also watched a sitcom about a Muslim community living in Canada to learn about the culture.

While the students had varying degrees of experience learning a language, all agreed that Arabic is challenging.

Brooke Hubbard, a junior who's taking both Arabic and Spanish and is interested in political science, said she didn't like the class much in the first semester. She said it was tough to learn a new, 28-letter alphabet and new rules of grammar, with the verb typically appearing before the subject and many forms of verbs. Unlike learning a European language, there are no familiar words. Arabic also is read from right to left.

"Once I got a grasp of the alphabet, it was easier," she said.

Sophomore Robin Silk said he signed up for Arabic because he lived in Bahrain for nine years, moving there with his family when he was 2.

"I really like the culture," he said. "I jumped at the chance to get back into it."

Even remembering bits of Arabic, he said, "It's been really difficult, but we're learning a lot. Arabic is a really important language to know. There are a lot of job opportunities."

Junior Kate O'Donnell, who's also taken French and Japanese, said she signed up for Arabic because she has a pen pal who speaks the language and she wanted to make a statement. When the class was first proposed, she said, there was " a lot of backlash" and some dismissed it as a "terrorist" or "oil" language.

But now, she said, the school community is "at least open to it."

She said she loves learning about the culture and history, but her favorite part of class is getting to eat Arabic food.

"I'm trying hard to learn everything I can," she said.

Bouchta said that, as students learn more about the Arab world, he's hoping it will encourage more acceptance of diversity within the school. Monarch enrolls students from about 10 Arab families. Last school year, those students were targeted in threatening graffiti scrawled on a bathroom wall.

Hosna Satar, a senior, is one of several Muslim students taking the class. As a Muslim, she said, she would like to learn the language. Plus, she wants to travel and dreams of working as a heart surgeon in a Muslim country.

"It's a beautiful language," she said. "I'm always telling other students to take Arabic."

Monarch High School teacher Redouan Bouchta, center, teaches Arabic to senior Mesel Tzegai, left, and sophomore Robin Silk, right, on Friday. Monarch is one of few schools in Colorado to offer Arabic as a foreign language.
(
Jeremy Papasso
)

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